1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a device management system. More particularly, the present invention relates to a method for managing internal software of a terminal by a device management server.
2. Description of the Related Art
In general, mobile terminals which implement mobile communication may be subjected to errors caused by hardware or software of the terminals themselves while being used. Mobile terminal may also be subjected to errors caused by problems occurring in a communication network while providing service in cooperation with the communication network. In order to detect such problems and take actions accordingly, a function for diagnosis and monitoring of the terminals is required. Accordingly, device management systems have been implemented for mobile terminals, which remotely manage the mobile terminals over the communication network. The device management system for a mobile terminal is constructed such that a Device Management server (DM server) is connected to the mobile terminal including a Device Management client (DM client) over a communication network.
In order to manage the mobile terminal, the DM server can collect information about the inventory of software existing in the mobile terminal, can install new software, and can update/remove installed software, by means of a device management protocol and a Software COmponent Management Object (SCOMO).
The SCOMO is a Management Object (MO) defined for collecting various information about software existing in a mobile terminal, and is configured as shown in FIG. 1. FIG. 1 is a view illustrating the configuration of a conventional SCOMO. A SCOMO may be largely classified into an inventory node and a download node. Furthermore, the inventory node may be classified into a deployed node and a delivered node. The MO defines parameters or variables, which must be shared between a DM server and a DM client, in the form of a tree as shown in FIG. 1. The MO is utilized in order for the DM server to obtain or change the values of internal parameters or variables of the mobile terminal. The MO contains information relating to a plurality of mobile terminals, in which the SCOMO is an MO for software component management and may be largely classified into an inventory node and a download node. The inventory node has stored values of software components currently installed or downloaded in the mobile terminal, and includes a deployed node for storing information about software currently installed and used in the mobile terminal, and a delivered node for containing information about software which has been downloaded and stored in the mobile terminal but has not yet been installed therein. The download node contains information about software which is scheduled to be newly downloaded or is currently being downloaded from the DM server to the mobile terminal. A plurality of nodes <x> may be located as lower nodes for each of the deployed node, delivered node, and download node, and each node <x> represents one software component and has a title established according to a corresponding situation. That is, node <x> represents a mobile terminal's function to be managed, and may correspond to a camera, Internet access, a DMB reception, a user's keypad input, an access to internal data of a mobile terminal, etc.
Node <x>, which is a software component, includes lower nodes for collecting information relating to software to be downloaded by a mobile terminal, to software to be installed or upgraded in a mobile terminal, and to software installed in a mobile terminal. The lower nodes include, for example, ID, data, title, version, installation option, descriptor, content type, operation, state value, and environment type nodes. Among the lower nodes, the installation option node stores options to be used when software is installed, the descriptor node stores a descriptor for basic classification, the content type node stores information about whether a software component corresponds to an execution program type or a library type, the operation node arranges execution nodes which the DM server can execute, the state value node expresses whether corresponding software is in an active state or in an inactive state, and the environment type node stores information about an execution environment platform.
A conventional procedure in which a DM server transmits certain software to a mobile terminal and installs the transmitted software in the mobile terminal is illustrated in FIG. 2. FIG. 2 is a view illustrating a conventional downloading/installing procedure. In step 31, a DM server 20 generates a download lower node about software to be downloaded to a SCOMO of a mobile terminal, and transmits the generated node to the mobile terminal. In step 33, the DM server 20 executes and transmits an execution node which is a lower node of the download load of the SCOMO. Thereafter, when the memory capacity of the mobile terminal is insufficient to download corresponding software thereto in step 35, a corresponding DM client 10 transmits an error message (e.g., “Download/Install failed due to device being out of memory”) to the DM server 20 and interrupts the downloading operation in step 37. Accordingly, the mobile terminal fails in downloading and/or installing certain software. That is, when the memory capacity of a mobile terminal is poor, there is no way for the DM server 20 to solve the problem.